"Discounting" and Devaluing Books

[darryl]

I include below the comments I made on the following thread on Teleread:

http://www.teleread.com/chris-meadow...reality-check/

I think the issues raised are worth discussing, though my comments only address the old devaluation meme.

My comments are as follows:

This devaluation argument is best described as yet another Zombie Meme. It has at its heart two unstated fallacies.

The first is that the value of books is equivalent to price, and therefore, because many books are “priceless” readers should be prepared to pay high prices for them. The use of the word “value” here seeks to introduce an element of emotion which is really irrelevant. Quite frankly, the best of the books that I have read in my lifetime are in a very real sense priceless, though this does not mean that I am prepared to go without food or water or shelter to read them or own a copy. Like many things, their “value” is not reflected in their price and is mostly irrelevant to that price.

The second is that the proper “price” of books is that set by the large publishers at the time when both readers and authors had no alternative. It is like saying that the correct price of sugar or salt is their value on the black market during the Second World War, when of course supply was short and rationing in effect in many countries. The truth is, of course, that technology changes and so do markets.

The large Publishers fears that books would be “devalued” by “discounting” was a valid one and has come to pass. The genie is out of the bottle, and the bottle has been broken. But, of course, what the large Publishers call discounting or deep discounting is often no more than the new proper price in the new market conditions. They would have readers put on blinkers and pretend the market has not changed so dramatically. That ebooks are a quaint fad, and even so justify a price tag the same as a paper book, despite the very real differences of licensing, drm, lack of a legal resale model etc. Personally, I think, like many industries facing their products going digital, large publishers hope was for a windfall. Prices the same but profit through the roof with negligible distribution costs and wastage, amongst other savings.

No, books have not been devalued for me. They remain as valuable as ever. But I refuse to be ripped-off by ridiculous and anachronistic pricing practices designed to preserve a dead business model and price gouge other consumers and myself.

[Cinisajoy]

Salt was worth more in Roman times than in WW2.
Yes I see your point.
I like your comment.

[fjtorres]

Nailed it square.
Good one.
The whole "books aren't products" argument is just an attempt to handwave the reality that with ten times more books coming to market each year and book sales flat or declining for most of the century, simple economics dictates declining prices.
Consumers understand this and resent attempts to prop up the old business model at their expense.

[susan_cassidy]

How can salt ever be in short supply, if one has access to the ocean? I've always wondered that. There was a rumor about salt being in short supply when I lived in Hawaii!?!

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

How can salt ever be in short supply, if one has access to the ocean? I've always wondered that. There was a rumor about salt being in short supply when I lived in Hawaii!?!

There's a great book called 'Salt: A World History'. I'm sure your answer is in there (or even the Wikipedia summary of the book).

Something can be plentiful without being accessible. There's plenty of Deuterium and Tritium in the ocean as well, but we still haven't figured out how to generate economically sustainable energy from it, except in theory. It has to do with what the available technology is capable of at any given time.

The existence of ebooks is disruptive by its very nature. It only took an Amazon to make use of available technology to set it in motion. It is predictable that publishers would attempt to preserve their business model, but in the end they will adapt, or die.

In any case, the overall revenue stream for book publishing will decline. This has been happening in the music publishing industry for the last ten years in its digital transition, and eventually, it looks like some subscription service like Spotify will be taking in most of the money. Content creators will at best get a large slice of a smaller pie, and will increasingly be joined by AI's that are capable of generating and curating content (undercutting Spotify, as AI's are happy to work for free). It is playing out a little differently with ebooks, but I think we'll wind up in a similar situation eventually.

I think that reading itself has also passed peak velocity. Neurologically it is a difficult task, requiring many thousands of hours to master, and as a way of understanding, vicariously experiencing, and learning things, it is horribly inefficient (I'm experimenting with Kindle's Word Runner and Spritz BeeLine with other apps, which promise modest speed improvements, but even this requires significant brain rewiring). Speech is even slower, though it's more flexible. What would be the point of 'downloading' directly to the brain (assuming that does not violate physics), which is just going to immediately distort and degrade the information?

As we externalize more of our cognitive tasks to AIs and are surrounded by embedded intelligent agents of many kinds, we (not necessarily ourselves, depending on how long we're around) will need to shift our focus somewhere else. Where will that be?

I've been reading 'The Rise of the Robots'. Highly recommended.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by susan_cassidy

How can salt ever be in short supply, if one has access to the ocean? I've always wondered that. There was a rumor about salt being in short supply when I lived in Hawaii!?!

The salt for human consumption comes mostly from salt mines. It is too costly to make salt water salt.

[Katsunami]

The one thing I think is that there is too much crap out there. I wonder how it was 'back then', in, let's say, 1850.

If at this time 90% of all books are crap, was it still like that back then? Did we have 10 good books and 90 crap books a year back then, and now we have 1 million good books and 90 million crap books... so MORE good books, but MUCH harder to find?

Sometimes I feel that the huge amount of books does devalue reading. It doesn't matter what I'm reading, but often I'm thinking I should be reading something else. What? I don't know. Just... 'something else' that is 'very good' and 'very important' and stuff. Hard to explain.

[Cinisajoy]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

The one thing I htink is that there is too much crap out there. I wonder how it was 'back then', in, let's say, 1850.

If at this time 90% of all books are crap, was it still like that back then? Did we have 10 good books and 90 crap books a year back then, and now we have 1 million good books and 90 million crap books... so MORE good books, but MUCH harder to find?

Sometimes I feel that the huge amount of books does devalue reading. It doesn't matter what I'm reading, but often I'm thinking I should be reading something else. What? I don't know. Just... 'something else' that is 'very good' and 'very important' and stuff. Hard to explain.

I have never felt like I should be reading something else.

[cfrizz]

You explained it very well. It sounds to me like other people have somehow gotten into your brain to dictate what you should be reading. Shut down that line of thinking and you will probably start enjoying again whatever you are reading.

What I read is very good to me, if it isn't I pick another book. The importance of the book is subjective to each individual. I refused to be dictated to by anyone else what is an important book to be read.

I don't allow anyone else to decide what I should read, I read what I want and everyone elses opinion is irrelevant.

I read for entertainment plain and simple.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by cfrizz

You explained it very well. It sounds to me like other people have somehow gotten into your brain to dictate what you should be reading.

If so, that would be strange. If someone asks something or tries to dictate what I should do and I don't support it, you can't get me to do it. (Although I have to admit I've never had to try and hodl on to principles while someone points a gun at my head.)

Also, I actually know no-one (literally NOBODY) who reads a book for their own enjoyment. Everyone I know only reads when they really, really have to, and even then they do a half-assed job of it.

Shut down that line of thinking and you will probably start enjoying again whatever you are reading.

What I read is very good to me, if it isn't I pick another book. The importance of the book is subjective to each individual. I refused to be dictated to by anyone else what is an important book to be read.

I don't allow anyone else to decide what I should read, I read what I want and everyone elses opinion is irrelevant.

I read for entertainment plain and simple.

I don't know why I always feel like I should be reading something else. Now I've been reading the last three books in the Shannara series, but I've also been thinking I should read the next novel in the Sherlock Holmes series. So, a few days ago I started that, but half-way through I felt like I should be reading older 80's fantasy such as Thomas Covenant, because I heard they are very good books, but never read them.

So now I've returned to the Shannara book, because as soon as I would start reading Thomas Covenant, I would undoubtedly feel that I should be reading more horror or ghost stories by Arthur Machen or Ambrose Bierce... or should I finally start reading Terry Pratchett?

Sometimes I feel I have too many books. In the old days, I found something to read, bought it, read it, and then started looking for something new. Reading was quite expensive back then; around $50 a month for English paperbacks, more if a book came as a hardcover. Now reading is cheap to free (especially with Kobo codes and the PD classics), so I have unlimited choice.

To some extent, that makes me feel as if each choice is worth less than in the old days.

[ekbell]

As someone who has 20+ books in my 'currently reading' list this sounds familiar (although in my case it's not so much a case of 'feel like I should' as 'I'm in the mood for'.

I've a small stack of pbooks and three blog archive tabs open as well.

As long as I'm actually finishing books I'm not going to worry about piece-meal reading although I've had to remind myself that if I've haven't felt like going back to a book in months it might be time to remove it from the 'currently reading' list (just maybe).

[darryl]

@Katsunami. What your difficulty seems to be is not quality but choice and affordability. The Internet has given us both, but we are ill-equipped to select from such a large variety of options. Helping us with this task is big business, which is why we see so much discussion about "discovery". And, as the excellent post above by cfrizz points out, "the importance of the book is subjective to each individual". And we all have different tastes. I place little importance on reviews because of this. And these days I read only for enjoyment. If I am really not enjoying a book, which happens only rarely, I abandon it and move on to something else.

The only difference now with self-published books is that there are now some books which are truly appalling. However, these are usually easy to cull by many means, probably the best of which is to have a read of the usually extensive sample made available. Stop worrying about what you should be reading, and concentrate on picking books you are likely to enjoy rather than books that others say are important. Prioritise what you want to read first. After all, you can't read them all at once, as much as you might like to. And if you are not enjoying a book, abandon it and move on. But don't abandon a book because you think for some reason it is more important to be reading something else.

And if you still feel your reading experience was better before self-publishing, abandon ebooks. Pretend they don't exist and go to your local bookshop just the way you used to do.

But today is a wonderful time for readers. Please try to adapt and make the most of it.

EDIT: By the way, I would be interested in hearing what your favourite book or books are? The book or books that you have enjoyed reading most. Personally, I have many. For myself, off the top of my head Ken Kesey's One Flow over the Cuckoo's Nest and Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead come to mind as examples. There are of course others.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Also, I actually know no-one (literally NOBODY) who reads a book for their own enjoyment. Everyone I know only reads when they really, really have to, and even then they do a half-assed job of it.


.

Not unheard of.
Same 'round these parts. More or less. (Growing up my near family read but hardly anybody else outside of school.)

Reading for entertainment is to some extent culturally determined (i.e., some countries do it a lot more than others) and reading in general is something that is hammered in to the young as something *necessary* and "good for you" (like eating veggies) which sparks resistance in many. And to top it off, the literary establishment in many countries downplays things like accessibility and storytelling so even when people are curious about books that are acclaimed by those "in they know" they run into boring exercises in writing technique. Nothing scares off would be readers as the recommendations from teachers and critics.

Add in the ready availability of other, cheaper forms of entertainment and you get the world we live in.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by darryl

@Katsunami. What your difficulty seems to be is not quality but choice and affordability. The Internet has given us both, but we are ill-equipped to select from such a large variety of options.

I think that this is the problem. Affordability is not really the problem; I could spend $100 or more on books if I wanted to. However, maybe, by becoming more affordable or even free, affordablility *IS* the problem.

Previously, when I had to pay up to €10 for a paperback, I'd pick what I wanted to read, because otherwise it would become too expensive, or it would take too much space. Now, with Delphi Classics costing €2 or €3 for a writer's entire oevre, books also cost €2-3 using Kobo codes, I can now literally go like:

"Oh, this might be interesting, and this, and this, and this...."

I've done so for a few years, and bought everything I ever wanted to read (even back in the day), bought everything I *think* I *might* want to read (which I only did rarely back then) and bought every Delphi Classic from every writer I know even superficially (which I would have never done back then).

Now I have like 10 times the choice I had back then, but it's *NOW* that I'm thinking: What should I read? If I read this, I can't read that. Previously this was not a problem, because having an 800+ book library at home wasn't even possible due to lack of space. I only had the thing I wanted to read.

Sometimes I would like to be able to pick up a book, sit down with it, and read it in about 2 hours and then remember it perfectly for the rest of my life. Then this "what should I read" would never be a problem.

So, the problem has moved from "choose according to available money/space" to "choose according to available time".

[Cinisajoy]

Waving at Katsunami.
I know in the offline world, maybe a dozen people that read for enjoyment. Funny thing about that is they are all related to me. In my immediate neighborhood, there are none.